Sharks fire coach David Quinn after historic last-place season - ESPN

The San Jose Sharks have fired David Quinn after a season that saw San Jose finish with the second-fewest points in the salary cap era.

Quinn's firing after two seasons Wednesday came less than a week after the Sharks (19-54-9) lost three straight games and five of their last six to end the regular season with the worst record in the NHL.

«After going through our end of the season process of internal meetings and evaluating where our team is at and where we want our group to go, we have made the difficult decision to make a change at the head coach position,» Sharks general manager Mike Grier said in a statement. «David is a good coach and an even better person. I would personally like to thank him for his ward work over these past two seasons. He and his staff did an admirable job under some difficult circumstances, and I sincerely appreciate how they handled the situation.»

Quinn oversaw the New York Rangers for three seasons but was fired after the 2020-21 season, having missed the playoffs after the team reached the postseason in his second campaign.

The Sharks hired Quinn before the 2022-23 season to oversee a team in transition. The Sharks had only missed the playoffs twice between the 2003-04 and 2018-19 seasons but missed the postseason in three straight years before Quinn's arrival.

Two weeks before Quinn was hired, the Sharks traded venerable defenseman Brent Burns to the Carolina Hurricanes. During Quinn's first season, the team also traded away star forward Timo Meier at that year's deadline and would ultimately trade away star defenseman Erik Karlsson, who won the Norris Trophy, to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the offseason.

The Sharks finished the 2022-23 season at 22-44-16 with the fourth-fewest points in